New Delhi, July 1 -- this US Men's National Team is no longer performing at a World Cup just to fill the bracket. Three games into a tournament played on home soil, the Americans are Group D winners, with victories over Paraguay and Australia and a late collapse against Turkey that settled into a points total the team will live with. Tonight at Bay Area Stadium - Bosnia-Herzegovina, 8 p.m. ET, in the knockout round - the gap between convincing and genuinely ready gets measured for the first time.

Jurgen Klinsmann, the German who coached the USMNT to the quarterfinals in 2014 before being fired two years later, gave the honest assessment before the tournament began. "In order to win a World Cup," he told Fox Sports, "it takes such a high ...